Setting a tone … Vasily Petrenko conducts the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. Photograph: Mark McNulty

Manchester audiences instantly succumbed to the tiny, blind Japanese pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii when he appeared with the BBC Philharmonic last year; the lower-voltage ovation that greeted his Liverpool debut, however, suggests his relationship with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic may be a more slow-burning affair. Tsujii is a phenomenally capable technician who claims to be able to communicate with the orchestra by listening to the conductor’s breathing. Even so, the busier aspects of his reading of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 3 sounded a little pre-determined. (There will be ample opportunity to deepen the bond when Tsujii joins the RLPO on its first tour of Japan in January next year.)

Vasily Petrenko’s season-long cycle of Tchaikovsky’s symphonieshas not been programmed in numerical order, although the performance of No 1, Winter Daydreams, sounded like a significant point of departure. Though Tchaikovsky’s youthful combination of folk melodies, balletic interludes and wistful nationalism can be difficult to reconcile, Petrenko fused the disparate influences as if determining what form the Russian symphony, and indeed the RLPO’s 175th season, is going to take.